The Lib Dem peer, who became an independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, says Britain must write a new memorandum of understanding with Jordan.

By Kate Maltby

12:13PM GMT 21 Jan 2014

As the Lord Rennard row rumbles on, the Lib Dem peer seems to be preparing for apossible court caseagainst the party by launching a series of attacks on thecharacters of the women who have accused him of sexual harassment.

But his accusers went on the counter-offensive this morning, with one, Alison Smith, telling me “So this is what happens when you complain of sexual harassment in the 21st century. That has to change.”

One of the issues raised is the question of ‘intent’: Lord Rennard did cause distress, concludes the Webster inquiry, but it can’t be proved that he intended to do so. So according to Lib Dem guidelines, if my boss critiques my cleavage in more detail than my policy papers, he might cause distress, but the poor bloke can’t be expected know that.

Lord Rennard

Such is the view of Chris Davies MEP, who seemed very concerned on Sunday that the public should grasp that Lord Rennard was only accused of touching a staffer’s thigh ‘through clothing’. How could any young woman object?

And it’s such interventions over past days by ‘friends’ of Lord Rennard that will make it hardest for the party hierarchy to heal. Lord Carlile, the Lib Dem peer, QC and Lord Rennard’s legal advisor, published anextraordinary articlein this weekend’s Mail on Sunday. According to Carlile, the party leadership’s treatment of his chum “has made the North Korean judicial system seem benign, and anything done by Henry VIII’s thugs to extract confessions from Anne Boleyn’s courtiers gentle”.

After the summary execution of Jang Song Thaek last month, British readers are fairly familiar with the North Korean judicial system. But here’s the popular version of the torture of Mark Smeaton, Anne Boleyn’s musician, which has passed into legend:

Then Cromwell called two stout young fellows of his, and asked for a rope and cudgel and ordered them to put the rope, which was full of knots, round Mark’s head, and twisted it with the cudgel until Mark cried out.

By the time the knotted rope was removed from Smeaton’s head, his eyes had been gouged out.

Lord Carlile may not have be familiar with every sourced version of Anne Boleyn’s trial, but what we all know is that each of her alleged lovers ended up dead. And that the tortures endured by men like Smeaton, were fleshy and physical, a fate more acute than questioning by a slightly embarrassed Lib Dem QC.

Bridget Harris

This all adds grist to the mill of Bridget Harris, a former special advisor to Clegg who was one of the complainants. As Harris puts it, the Lib Dem Lords "is stuffed full of QCs and so they are quite comfortable being the final arbitrators of what's wrong and what's right without giving a fig for public opinion".

It’s clear she's talking about Lord Carlile. In his Mail article, Lord Carlile claims he found one piece of evidence to undermine one woman’s story: “a devastating item of contradictory evidence that it would not be appropriate to publish”. He effectively insinuates that one of the women has severe character flaws, (and there is but a small pool of women whom he could mean), without providing any evidence.

Certainly he is putting pressure on the Lib Dems to make the full internal inquiry public – calling it “a terrible example of secret justice”. Except that, as Hugh Muir points out, as the Government’s independent reviewer of anti-terrorism processes, Lord Carlile has been quite the expert indefending the most secret of justice.

I’ve actually heard the details of this “devastating” character flaw, and even if taken at face value, it seems both irrelevant and predictable. Meanwhile, Alison Smith’s comments to me highlight that “Carlile continues to insist that there were only four victims. In fact, there were 11”. The issue goes beyond “touching over clothing” – Smith claims that after she refused his aggressive 'advances', Rennard trapped her in a room and refused to let her leave.

The danger of Lord Carlile’s attitude is not merely that it damages the Liberal Democrats, already a tarnished institution. But as a senior QC, he risks fuelling public perception that our legal establishment is stuck in the nineteenth century – especially in its attitudes to career women.

I'm not criticising the whole legal establishment, but Lord Carlile's prominent position is such that he is in danger of damaging the legal profession's image with young women, regardless of how accurately or not his behaviour does in fact reflect on the rest of them.

The profession has made great strides, but dusty cobwebs still lurk: an exceptionally senior legal figure recently told a public meeting of young people considering law: “it would be difficult to be a truly great QC while also being a mother, but one barrister friend of mine writes naval history in his spare time, so I suppose you can find the time if you try”.

Kate Maltby is a writer and academic. She also oversees publications for Bright Blue, a think tank campaigning for liberal conservatism within the Tory Party.